Description: Presented at May 2000 Spring Meeting. Some companies are planning to increase sales and lower expenses by packaging the sale of long-term-care coverage with complementary products. Life and annuity combinations, market positioning, product features and product development issues are discussed.

Description: The basics and importance of the utilization assumption for long-term care insurance.

Description: Second article in a series on how to use predictive analytics to improve the development of long-term care projection assumptions.

Description: Third article in a series on how to use predictive analytics to improve the development of long-term care projection assumptions.

Description: Health Watch, Issue 79, December 2015, Health Watch

Description: This article describes methodologies for detection and deterrence of Medicare fraud. It also describes the validation of PRIDIT for fraud detection in Medicare.

Description: This article will consider several issues arising from ACO budgeting and pricing of stoploss coverage, including: 1) attribution of members; 2) claim carve outs; 3) ambiguous stoploss terms; 4) providers gaming the system and 5) credibility of data.

Description: First article in a series that walks through the progression from developing LTC assumptions using traditional methods to doing so using predictive analytics.

Description: We highlight a new approach leveraging predictive analytics to identify high risk and rising risk opioid users for more effective screening and follow-up care.

Description: Abstract: The percentage of the population who are obese has grown dramatically worldwide over the last several decades, although stabilizing recently in the United States. Studies have found the effects on mortality to be inconsistent and controversial because of methodological differences and the complexity of the relationship between obesity and mortality. This paper discusses this relationship and sheds light on the likely effects of this epidemic. Issues associated with the so-called obesity-mortality paradox, where mortality experience is lower for those individuals who are overweight and in some who are obese compared with the mortality of those in the normal weight category, are examined. Although certain recently reported studies of the relationship between mortality and obesity indicate that obesity is related to a reduced percent of additional mortality, this may in part be due to the shorter average time that those currently obese have been exposed to their condition. Nevertheless, the amount of health care costs and rates of disability associated with being obese are significant, contributing to the increase in overall health care costs as they become more numerous and age. Although obesity is being addressed with a great deal of activity and publicity, they will continue to prove challenging for individuals and society to manage and overcome.